Secret documents reveal that US led effort to secure the post-Soviet nuclear weapons worked

Newly declassified documents show that the risk of nuclear proliferation at the end of the Soviet Union in 1991 was even greater than publicly known at the time, with 3,429 Soviet strategic warheads scattered outside of Russia in various former Soviet republics, according to today’s posting by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.

The publication marks the 25th anniversary of the day President George H.W. Bush signed the historic Nunn-Lugar legislation into law, beginning a flow of U.S. funding that helped secure the post-Soviet nuclear weapons as well as reduce chemical and biological dangers, with the hands-on cooperation of Russian, Kazakh and American military personnel and scientists.

Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar today join a 25th reunion of dozens of Nunn-Lugar veterans including Russians, Kazakhs, and Americans, at a series of panel discussions on the future of mutual security and U.S.-Russian relations, in the historic Kennedy Caucus Room of the U.S. Senate.

The discussion will address today’s headlines about U.S. relations with Russia, and elevate an underappreciated narrative based on 25 years of cooperation ridding the world of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, that offers lessons and a potential model for mutual international security.